It’s great to save money. That’s why pay-on-time discounts have grown in popularity among us in recent years, but are these discounts on our energy bills really all they crack up to be? Gobbill is a bill payment service for households and small businesses. It scans bills for fraud, pays the energy bill on-time and calculates the actual discount % for users. Recently Gobbill conducted a study of bills (for a year ending 31 Jan 2019) and compared the discounts to what energy companies advertise.

Diagram 1.0: Electricity bill in Gobbill

What’s the deal with pay-on-time discounts?

A recent Canstar Blue article “Pay on Time Energy Discounts Explained” mentioned that you can generally expect to see offers ranging from 10% to 30%, or even more in some cases. Pay on time discounts of up to 47% have been seen across Australia in the past.

Pay-on-time discounts reward you by discounting your energy bills by a set amount every month if you pay before the due date. However, conditions of your discounts can vary significantly depending on the provider and plan you choose. Understanding your energy bill and the conditions attached to your discount can be complicated, and it can be even trickier to compare it with other available offers to find a better deal.

What is driving pay-on-time discounts? Last year, the ACCC found that pay-on-time ‘discounts’ have emerged in response to attempts by government regulations to constrain late payment fees. Pay-on-time energy discounts could be on the chopping block because it is tricky and confusing reported by Choice.com.au

What’s the catch?

Pay-on-time discounts seem like a great idea to save more cash but these ‘discounts’ on your energy bills can sometimes end up costing you more if you don’t manage to meet these conditions.

Customers also tend to forget that most of these discounts are only valid for 12 or 24 months from the commencement date of their plan. Without renewing these plans, you’ll be required to pay the full, non-discounted price of your energy bill.

Gobbill analysed a number of bills over the last year and found that some energy providers aren’t giving the discounts promised in their headlines. Gobbill is able to calculate the true discount you receive on your bill when you send your bill into Gobbill for payment.

You’ll be surprised what we found.

Gobbill found discrepancies between discounts advertised by energy providers and the actual discount applied to energy bills from a sample of several hundred Victorian bills over the last year. Our data suggests that certain energy customers may not be getting what they expected from the advertised headline discounts.

On top of that, the ACCC reported that energy retailers set their discounts with reference to their own set prices, making it complicated to compare headline discounts between energy providers. As a result, consumers tend to make decisions based on simple indicators, such as headline discounts. However, they may be signing up to exclusions and conditions that deliver a lower saving that other providers.

In some cases, Gobbill found that energy providers were promising discounts as high as 33% but only giving 23% off energy bills. If that was my electricity bill, I would be paying an extra $241.68 every year on my electricity bill alone.

Major telcos, utility providers and insurers may not have jumped on the cryptocurrency bandwagon, but thanks to two local fintech startups that no longer matters, with cryptocurrency owners now able to pay any bill in crypto.

Cryptocurrency exchange Cointree and automated billing platform Gobbill will let Australians pay bills with cryptocurrency, regardless of whether the business itself accepts the digital currency. Gobbill acts as a go-between, taking the funds from its users and paying the bills on their behalf.

Gobbill co-founder Shendon Ewans admits that he was late to the cryptocurrency party, only beginning to dabble in it early last year, but said that’s what made a partnership with Cointree attractive.

“I have traded, but not very successfully. That was the appeal of Cointree. I’m a novice and I’m surrounded by people at [fintech co-working space] Stone and Chalk, who are deep crypto specialists,” he said.

“Fast forward into the future and what we’re seeing is, like it or not, this will be part of our daily lives. Gobbill already let people pay bills from their cards or bank accounts, so now they can pay in cryptocurrency too.”

Melbourne, Australia 5th June, 2018 – Australian Securities Exchange and Frankfurt Stock Exchange cross listed iSignthis Ltd (ASX:ISX/FRA:TA8), the world leading RegTech for identity verification and payment services, is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with an artificial intelligence (AI) fintech bill payment automation startup called Gobbill™. iSignthis is supporting innovative companies like Gobbill by providing global identity verification and payment solutions.

“Partnering with iSignthis is a strategic and important milestone for Gobbill. It enables our customers to pay any bill for billers that do not accept card payments or various card schemes. To pay any bill using UnionPay or American Express is a significant offering, particularly for overseas Australian property investors and small businesses using Gobbill”, stated Shendon Ewans, CEO and Co-founder of Gobbill.

John Karantzis, CEO of iSignthis said, “Gobbill represents an opportunity for iSignthis to support a prospective leader in bill payment automation, as well as for us to provide a means for them to expand outside of Australia, by providing facilities to them in Europe as they expand. Having witnessed Gobbill emerge over the last three years, we are delighted to be part of their future growth.”

Gobbill will also have the ability to globally digitally identify customers to offer a convenient way of switching service providers using their One-Click-Switch™ method. Utilising AI to automate research and comparisons of products, as well as interact with customers, will save them significant time and money.

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About Gobbill Australia Pty Ltd

Gobbill™ is a digital finance assistant that automates bill payments using artificial intelligence for households and small businesses. Users are protected from online scams, avoid late fees, maximise discounts and protect their credit rating scores. Small businesses have the additional benefit of digitising invoices, scheduling payments and synchronising data with their accounting software.

After two years of R&D, the company launched its automated bill payment process for public use. It is now investing further R&D in AI to help customers easily switch service providers and save money using its One-Click-Switch™ method.

Founded in 2015, Gobbill can pay bills issued from any Australian provider including utilities, telecommunications, council rates, insurance and more. Gobbill is a Microsoft Startup sponsored company, a partner of the Australian Government’s cyber safety initiative, AI partner of Silverpond and member of Stone & Chalk.

Australian Securities and Frankfurt Stock Exchange listed iSignthis Ltd is the global RegTech leader in remote identity verification, payment authentication and payment processing. iSignthis provides an end-to-end onboarding service for merchants, with a unified payment and identity service via our Paydentity™ and ISXPay® solutions.

By converging payments and identity, iSignthis® delivers regulatory compliance to an enhanced customer due diligence standard, offering global reach to any of the world’s 4.2Bn ‘bank verified’ card or account holders[1], that can be remotely on-boarded to regulated merchants in as little as 3 to 5 minutes.

iSignthis Paydentity service is the trusted back office solution for regulated entities, allowing merchants to stay ahead of the regulatory curve, and focus on growing their core business.

iSignthis’ and its subsidiary, iSignthis eMoney Ltd, trade as ISXPay®, and is an EEA authorised eMoney Monetary Financial Institution, offering card acquiring in the EEA, Australia and New Zealand. ISXPay is a principal member of Visa Inc, Mastercard Worldwide and JCB International.

The partnership will see Gobbill offer a version of its digital service through the myprosperity platform, providing seamless bill payment and management services to households currently using the platform in Australia and overseas.

CEO of myprosperity, Chris Ridd, said the deal would create value for its customers, saving time and money on bill payments, as well as providing protection against an increasing number of bill scams.

“With myprosperity we are creating an integrated platform where advisers and their clients can come together to manage and collaborate on their entire financial world. We do this by creating an open and diverse ecosystem of partners whose products and services enhance the financial lives of our customers. As a leading innovator in automated bill payments, we’re excited to be working with Gobbill to streamline another critical element of a client’s financial world, their bills.”

Shendon Ewans, CEO and Co-founder of Gobbill, said the deal would enable the company to reach an important customer segment to offer its bill payment services within an established and trusted platform.

“myprosperity is a rapidly growing company that has successfully established a trusted platform and ecosystem of financial advisors, accountants, and other service providers. Our companies are aligned in their values, customer segments and strategic direction.”

The partnership with myprosperity supports Gobbill’s growth strategy to increase the use of its product through key partners, expand internationally and position itself as the global leader in bill payment automation.

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About Gobbill Australia

Gobbill™ is a digital finance assistant that automates bill payments using artificial intelligence for households and small businesses. Users are protected from online scams, avoid late fees, maximise discounts and protect their credit rating scores. Small businesses have the additional benefit of digitising invoices, scheduling payments and synchronising data with their accounting software.

After two years of R&D, the company launched its automated bill payment process for public use. It is now investing further R&D in AI to help customers easily switch service providers and save money using its One-Click-Switch™ method.

Founded in 2015, Gobbill can pay bills issued from any Australian provider including utilities, telecommunications, council rates, insurance and more. Gobbill is a Microsoft Startup sponsored company, a partner of the Australian Government’s cyber safety initiative, AI partner of Silverpond and member of Stone & Chalk.

myprosperity is a cloud-based personal wealth platform that makes it easy for accountants and advisers to help their clients get their financial world – sorted. Available on desktop and as a mobile app, myprosperity is a whitelabel wealth portal that boasts live data feeds and digital doc signing, as well as budgeting, cashflow and goal setting tools for an integrated all-in-one approach to personal finance.

Founded in 2011, the company is now the leading personal wealth platform in Australia. In March 2018, myprosperity was awarded Financial Advice Innovator of the Year at the Fintech Business Awards.